NICOLA STURGEON'S claim she has "a renewed, refreshed and strengthened mandate" for another independence vote is "warped", according to a shock new study.

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First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been ploughing ahead with her desperate plans to take Scotland out of the Union since her Scottish National Party’s performance in last December’s election. But the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has said the SNP’s performance “delivered one of the most disproportionate results” in the UK and Scottish voters were being “cheated”.

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The ERS said that under a reformed voting system like proportional representation, the SNP would have taken 26, 28 or 30 seats, depending on which system was used, rather than the 48 it did win.

The report said: “In Scotland, voters of both the Conservatives and Labour suffered, with 80 percent of Conservative voters and 95 percent of Labour voters going unrepresented, compared to just 15 percent of SNP voters.

“This means that over half of voters in these areas do not have an MP they voted for.”

Following December’s election results, Ms Sturgeon she had won “a renewed, refreshed and strengthened mandate” for another independence vote and ploughed ahead with her plans to put it to the Scottish people in 2021.

But the ERS argued Scottish voters had been left “voiceless”.

And out of the 2.8million votes in Scotland, 1.9m or 68.5 percent were “ignored votes” as they did not influence the overall result.

This is because the votes went to candidates who were not elected (1.5million votes) or were surplus votes for winning candidates.

The UK remains the only democracy in Europe to use FPTP to elect its MPs.

Jess Garland, Director of Policy and Research at the ERS, said: “Voters in Scotland are being cheated out of fair representation in the Commons.

Nicola Sturgeon said she had a mandate for Scottish independence (Image: EXPRESS)

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“The huge scale of unreprecented votes, in Scotland and across the UK, represents a democratic crisis that has to be tackled. It’s time to ensure seats match how people want to vote.”

But SNP depute leader Keith Brown continued to push his party line for independence.

He told The Herald: “The SNP are long-standing supporters of PR, which is in place for Holyrood and council elections in Scotland.

“While we would support changes to FPTP and the abolition of the Lords, it is clear the only real democratic solution for Scotland to ensure it always gets the government it votes for is to be independent.”